WASHINGTON, Dec. 21 — (PRNewswire) — According to five distinguished labor, government and business leaders, the U.S. economy will remain challenged and unemployment will remain unacceptably high until a reasonable balance exists between the nation's manufacturing and services sectors, with at least 20 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) again coming from manufacturing.

Writing in the January/February issue of The American Prospect, Tom Buffenbarger, Leo Hindery, Ed Rendell, Leo Gerard and Don Riegle examine the causes of the current crisis and offer a formula to revive the great industrial engines that helped create and sustain the American middle class.

"The global economic crisis that began in 2007 and our own jobless recovery are each the result of the very wrong-headed globalization of finance and trade that started in the early '80s and continued over the next two decades," write the authors. "As a result, what we have today is an American economy that is inherently prone to crisis, structurally unbalanced, and incapable of maintaining, let alone growing, a large, vibrant middle class."

The article goes on to challenge President Obama's recovery plan as under-appreciating the importance of a robust manufacturing sector. "In the transition from campaign to administration, Obama's focus on employing and invigorating Main Street was subordinated by some in his administration to the task of resuscitating (and not even reforming) Wall Street."

In addition to an all-of-government manufacturing policy, the article calls for buy domestic requirements for federal procurements, investment tax credits, long-term infrastructure investments, reformed trade agreements, and changes to the tax code that boost domestic manufacturing and reward corporations for creating jobs in the U.S., among other changes.

R. Thomas Buffenbarger, a journeyman machinist, is International President of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. Leo Hindery Jr., a corporate CEO (and former journeyman sheetmetal worker), is chairman of the Smart Globalization Initiative at the New America Foundation. Edward G. Rendell is Governor of Pennsylvania. Leo W. Gerard, a journeyman steelworker, is International President of the United Steelworkers. Former Michigan Sen. Donald W. Riegle Jr. is a member of the Smart Globalization Initiative.